Текст книги "The Stone Rose"

Автор книги: Carol Townend

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Текущая страница: 24 (всего у книги 35 страниц)

Chapter Twenty-Two

It was cool under the heavy canopy of leaves, and as the bridleway was nothing more than a slender brown ribbon winding gently through a sea of foaming bracken, they had to ride in single file. Alan sat easily in his saddle. As guide he took the leader’s place. Gwenn, riding Dancer, came second – she carried her brother before her. Ned brought up the rear with Katarin. The monks’ best saddle had been put on Dancer, and Ned was left battling with a broken-down saddle he reckoned old enough to have seen service at Hastings. Its frame was cracked, and every time the mule put down a hoof, Ned felt the jarring right up his spine. It was uncomfortable for him and no doubt for the mule too, which might explain the animal’s reluctance to keep up with the others. The cantle of the saddle had had all the stuffing knocked out of it, and the skirt lay flat on the mule’s back, but at the moment this was serving them well, for Katarin sat behind her brother-in-law, hands hooked round his belt.

‘Ned, are you alright?’ Gwenn reined in, and waited for her husband to catch up.

Jabbing in his heels, Ned tried to squeeze another few paces out of his reluctant steed. ‘I’m considering throwing this saddle away. I might make better progress bareback.’

‘But what about Katarin?’

‘That’s a point; I doubt she’d stay on without a saddle.’ He twisted round to reassure himself that his silent companion was as comfortable as possible, and was rewarded with a vague smile. ‘Good girl,’ he murmured, ‘you’re doing well.’

Waiting till Ned’s mule reached Dancer’s hindquarters, Gwenn lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘Ned, there’s something I’d like you to keep from Alan.’

‘Keep from Alan?’ At this point the mule let out a bray of protest and, digging in its hoofs, refused to budge.

‘I...I don’t want him to know I’ve got the Stone Rose with me. You won’t tell him, will you?’

Ned laboured away with his heels, with little effect on the recalcitrant mule. ‘Why should I tell him? It’s not the sort of thing it would occur to me to mention to Alan.’

‘I know. But I...I don’t want Alan discovering it’s in your pack. You’ll keep it from him, won’t you?’

Ned threw her a puzzled glance, and tried shaking his mount’s reins. ‘Aye, but–’

‘Ned, please.’

‘I won’t mention it if you don’t want me to,’ he said, exasperated and panting with his effort on the mule. The animal was rolling its eyes and champing on its bit, and it would not take a step. ‘Christ, this animal’s got a hide of iron.’ Ned swore and clambered from the saddle. ‘I’ll walk.’

Alan hailed them from the front. ‘What’s going on?’

Gwenn urged Dancer through plumes of green bracken towards Alan.

‘It’s Ned’s mule,’ she explained when she reached him. ‘It won’t keep up.’

‘I’ll take Katarin, if that helps.’

‘You would?’

‘You have kept your low opinion of me, I think,’ Alan said in a soft, intimate voice.

Gwenn floundered under the cool, grey gaze, and the memory of the promise she had just extracted from Ned stung her to an instant denial that betrayed her true feelings better than she knew. ‘No. No!’

‘You always disliked me, didn’t you, mistress?’

‘Disliked you?’ Gwenn looked nonplussed. ‘I don’t dislike you.’ Her voice had a ring of truth to it, for though she did not entirely trust him, there had always been a spark of something between them.

‘But it galls you to accept my help.’

‘No. Alan, I am grateful.’ At that moment, a golden rod of light fell through the branches, bathing Alan’s head with a halo of brightness. His hair assumed the blue-black sheen of a raven’s wing, and for an instant his slate-coloured eyes sparkled with a clarity which more than equalled the brilliance of the gem in the Stone Rose.

Gwenn blinked. The effect of the sunlight on his countenance when all else was in shadow was extraordinary. It made her feel as though she could see to the heart of the man, even perhaps to his soul. As she gazed into eyes that were no longer unfathomable but clear as crystal, she became aware of a curling in her stomach, akin to embarrassment. It was as though she was seeing something very private, something which belonged to Alan alone and yet which attracted her very much. There was a part of Alan le Bret which she yearned to reach out for, which she yearned to cherish... Then Firebrand took a step, the light shifted, and Alan’s eyes looked the way they always did, remote and cloudy with shadows. She was left struggling with a deep, inexplicable sense of loss.

‘Mistress?’

‘I...I beg your pardon?’

‘I offered to lighten Ned’s load and take Katarin.’

‘My thanks, cousin.’ Ned had caught up, mule and Katarin in tow. He rubbed the base of his spine and gave an expressive grimace. ‘But I’m better walking.’

Alan frowned at the mule. ‘I should never have allowed myself to be persuaded to act as your guide. I hope that monk gets my message to Duke Geoffrey. I risk losing the best place I ever had as it is, without that obstinate animal delaying me further. It’s a long way to Ploumanach, cousin. Can you keep pace all the way?’

‘I’m not yet doddering, I can keep going for miles.’ Ned grinned. ‘Perhaps when I tire you can take my place.’

Alan favoured Gwenn with a slow, considering look which brought the hot blood rushing to her cheeks, and sent sinful thoughts scurrying where they had no place to be. ‘Take your place when you tire, Ned?’ he mused, wickedly. ‘I think I should enjoy that.’

Lifting her chin, and still trying to grasp exactly what it was she had seen in Alan’s eyes, Gwenn clutched her brother to her breast. How was it that one moment the Duke’s captain could rouse feelings of great tenderness in her, and the next moment she could cheerfully strangle him? She wondered if Ned would react badly to Alan’s provocative remark.

‘My thanks, cousin; I knew I could rely on you.’

Ned’s blinkered acceptance of anything Alan said or did irritated Gwenn further. She glared at Alan.

His wicked mouth edged up at the corners. Then, turning Firebrand’s head in a northerly direction, he presented his back to his companions and spurred his mount down the track.

‘Gwenn?’

‘Yes?’

‘Alan is not upsetting you, is he?’

‘No, he is not upsetting me.’

‘Because if he is, we could hire another guide.’

‘No, we had better stick with Alan.’ But despite her denials, she rode for the next hour in a fulminating silence as total as that her sister was keeping on the mule. Deep down, she realised that she was only angry because part of her had wanted to respond to Alan...

***

Conan had tracked Ned and Gwenn as far as St Félix-in-the-Wood. He was working on his own. He knew that when Otto Malait had stormed down on the prior like the Grim Reaper, he had failed to learn anything concerning Gwenn Herevi, but Conan had hopes that more cunning methods might bring success.

Blending into the shadows behind a hazel shrub, he watched as two of the brethren piled wood into deep willow baskets with thick leather straps attached to the side. As far as Conan could gather, the brothers were conferring about a mule of all things, which did not sound promising. Nevertheless, he resolved to listen patiently.

‘I would never have thought it possible, Brother Marzin, but I miss that mule.’ The monk snapped an overlong branch into more manageable pieces. ‘I regret Prior Hubert’s selling of him.’

The other monk laughed and waved at the baskets. ‘You miss the mule because he carried these, Dominig,’ he said.

‘No, Marzin, it’s more than that. That mule belonged to my father. I shall miss him when I go to the river.’ To Brother Dominig’s delight, Prior Hubert had given him permanent charge of the fish tanks and eel traps.

‘That mule was an intractable beast.’

‘I brought him from home. I liked him.’

‘Theirs was the greater need, Brother Dominig.’

Conan gave a silent, cavernous yawn.

‘Aye, so it was. I cannot deny that. Poor girl. So young and left to shoulder so much responsibility.’

Mid-yawn, Conan stiffened and strained to hear. Girl? What girl? To his intense annoyance, he saw the dirty white cur creep into the corner of his vision. He had thought he had foisted the animal off on Johanna. Motioning the dog away, Conan prayed it would not betray him. His poorly stomach churned.

‘True.’ The monk named Marzin had a strong voice which was easy to hear despite its foreign lilt. ‘But consider, Dominig, how God provided for her. He gave her Ned Fletcher to share her burden, and then my brother arrived.’

Wondering who the monk’s brother was, and how he fitted into this, Conan listened for more. He remembered Ned Fletcher. Was this monk English, like Ned Fletcher?

‘I cannot help wondering,’ Dominig mused, ‘why God permitted the Count to destroy Mistress Gwenn’s home in the first place. If He was so eager to provide for her, why did He allow that to happen?’

‘Brother Dominig!’ Marzin clucked disapproval.

Conan heard the reproof implicit in the young monk’s tone, but skulking behind the hazel, with a wary eye on the wretched dog and an obstructed view of the two monks, he was unable to see the affectionate mockery in Brother Marzin’s eyes.

‘It’s only a day since you took your vows, and already you are questioning His will.’

Another log thudded into a basket. Furtively parting the branches, Conan saw that one of the monks, presumably Dominig, had his lips set in a straight line. ‘Mock me if you will, Marzin,’ he said miserably. ‘But try as I might, I cannot understand how God can be so cruel.’

Marzin went over to his companion. ‘It’s man that is cruel, Dominig, not the Almighty.’

Dominig gazed for a moment at Marzin’s round, open countenance. ‘You are blessed, Brother, you have such faith. Would that I had a tenth of your faith.’

Marzin’s plump face was split by a smile. ‘Faith upholds me, when all else fails.’

‘But, Marzin–’

Marzin shook his pale, newly tonsured crown. ‘Not now, Dominig, the kindling is needed in the cookhouse.’

Obediently, Dominig scanned the clearing, his eyes chancing on a fallen branch in front of Conan’s hazel hide. Crossing over, he scooped up the bough. Conan’s belly cramped with the fear of imminent discovery, but the monk merely straightened and reverted to his original theme. ‘What do you think they will do with my mule when they reach their journey’s end?’

‘Your mule?’ Marzin said, lifting an eyebrow. ‘We hold all our possessions in common, Dominig, have you forgot?’

‘I haven’t forgotten, Marzin.’ Dominig’s reply was almost sharp. ‘But that animal did belong to my father. I brought him with me when I joined as a novice. I can’t help it if I am attached to him.’

‘Don’t you think your attachment to that animal might in part be the reason Prior Hubert gave him up so easily?’ Marzin asked. ‘In selling him, he broke your bondage to the past.’

‘But it’s a long way they’re taking him.’

Where are they taking him? Behind his bush, Conan willed the dog to keep still. He willed the monks to supply him with the answer he needed. Where? Where were they going?

‘Not so far,’ Marzin reassured his brother. ‘Ploumanach is only five days away the way your mule plods.’

‘Ploumanach,’ Conan breathed, and a slow smile spread across his weathered face. ‘Ploumanach.’ In Breton, Ploumanach meant ‘place of the monks’, and that didn’t tell Conan its location. He hadn’t the foggiest idea where Ploumanach was, but he would find out.

‘Five days away?’ Brother Dominig’s knowledge of distant places, like most people’s, was limited to a ten-mile radius of his home, in his case the monastery. Anything outside that he knew about in only the most hazy terms.

‘Relax, Ploumanach is in Brittany, Dominig,’ Marzin replied with a laugh. ‘Your mule is still in Christendom.’

Conan had the information he had come for. ‘Ploumanach,’ he muttered. ‘Ploumanach.’ And holding the branches aside with finger and thumb, he stole from the clearing.

If he did what was expected of him, he should hand this information on to Captain Malait together with what Johanna had told him about the jewel, but he was pulled two ways. Was it likely that the Viking’s reward would come anywhere near the value of the gem? If it turned out to be half the size that Johanna had said, it would be worth a fortune.

The little white cur nudged his heels. About to lash out, it occurred to Conan that the mongrel, by not betraying his presence to the monks, was learning sense. He deserved a reward. Ferreting a heel of wheat loaf and a chunk of meat from his scrip, Conan threw them to the dog which devoured them in two famished bites.

Conan thought hard as he strode through the trees. Was this the moment to break away from de Roncier? He had been thinking that it was time he did something for himself, and this jewel of Gwenn Herevi’s was a godsend – if it existed.

Conan understood that such a betrayal would mean exile from his home, for the Count had a long memory; but Conan was rootless. He did not feel bound to Vannes and Southern Brittany any more than he felt bound to his sister Johanna. He spared the sibling he had so casually abandoned in the disreputable hostelry no more than a passing thought. He was not his sister’s keeper, and in any case, the girl was no innocent – had she not already born a child? Johanna could fend for herself.

The pedlar wavered, unable quite to take the final decision to strike out in a new direction. ‘Ploumanach. Ploumanach,’ he muttered imprinting the name in his mind. ‘Shall we go there, boy?’ he asked the dog, whose canine eyes were riveted on his feeder. The stumpy tail wagged, eagerly. Assuming the jewel existed, suppose it was lost or sold by the time he reached Ploumanach? He would have thrown away a spasmodic but fairly regular source of money by alienating Captain Malait. It was a risk. On the other hand, if he got his hands on the gem, he would never have to worry about where the next crust was coming from.

Conan came to a decision.

***

It was the middle of the afternoon, and Philippe, who had spent the morning either dozing or gazing up at the nodding leaves, had tired of the novelty of the ride. His crying had at first been petulant and fretful, but now he was working himself up into a genuine rage, kicking his legs against the wrapping which held him immobile in his sister’s arms.

Alan, coming at length to the conclusion that St Clair’s heir was not going to cry himself to sleep, reined back. ‘Do you want to stop?’

Gwenn flung him a grateful look, eyes harassed, hair in disarray, as she juggled with reins and infant’s coverlet. ‘Could we, Alan? Do you think it’s safe?’

Alan dismounted. ‘A few minutes won’t hurt,’ he said, stretching like a cat and coming towards her. ‘We could all do with a change.’

‘Philippe is not used to being confined. He doesn’t normally cry like this, but he’s learning to crawl, and he finds the restrictions irksome.’

Reaching Gwenn first, Ned took her reins from her and wound them round a branch before lifting Philippe from her lap. As soon as the baby was placed on the ground and his coverlet removed, the crying stopped.

‘Knows his own mind, doesn’t he?’ Alan said, and seeing Ned was intent on the baby, he offered Gwenn his hand with a gallant flourish. ‘Lady Blanche?’

Gwenn slid to the ground in front of Alan and his hands went to her waist, steadying her. Alan’s lips were framing a light, flirtatious remark, when something about the closeness of her, and the pink in her cheeks, gave him pause. For a moment he was whisked back two years to the time they had sheltered in the Locmariaquer dolmen and, as then, he felt faint stirrings of alarm. They had kissed then, they must not do so again. Carefully, Alan peeled his hands from her too-willowy waist and stepped back.

Privately he agreed with Ned, Gwenn was pretty, but Alan had never found resisting prettiness difficult; looks did not count for much. Prettiness, like flowers, soon faded. But this past day, he had seen another side of Gwenn, a side he had always suspected was there. He had watched how she put her brother and sister’s needs before her own, and he had seen the determination with which she battled on against the odds. He must repress his growing feeling for her. What would she think if she knew the way his thoughts were tending? Would she be shocked? Once or twice Alan had caught her eyes on him, and they had been glowing like dark amber. Unconsciously, he sighed. He must stop this, now, before it became too painful. He could not hurt Ned. Gwenn was Ned’s wife.

Seeing the frown darkening his brow, Gwenn misinterpreted the reason for it. ‘I’m sorry, Alan. We are making slower progress than you anticipated. It will be many days before you can rejoin your Duke.’

Gwenn’s mouth... Her lips were rosy, and slightly parted. She was flushed from the ride, and looked very desirable. Though there were at least two paces between them, Alan could feel the heat of her body. His scowl deepened while he tried to recall when he had last enjoyed a woman. It seemed an age ago. It was obviously time he found one, and the sooner the better. But would another woman’s mouth look as tempting as Gwenn’s?

‘Alan?’ Ned brought Alan back to earth with a thud.

‘Aye?’ Whatever was the matter with him? A harmless flirtation with Ned’s wife was one thing, but adultery was out of the question. It had never held any appeal for Alan, even before he had discovered the truth of his birth. Learning that the man he had adored as his father was in fact his stepfather, had only strengthened this conviction. Gwenn Herevi – no, that was wrong, she was Gwenn Fletcher now and he must strive to remember that – Gwenn Fletcher, tempting though she was, was not for him.

‘Pass Katarin down, would you?’

Moving to the mule, Alan obliged, and the little girl gave him one of her rare smiles. Under the concerned gaze of the three adults, Katarin crossed to where her brother was crawling in the leaves.

Alan heard Gwenn’s sigh, and Ned must have done too, for he put an arm round her and pulled her to his side. ‘She’ll heal, Gwenn,’ Ned murmured, kissing her ear. Gwenn coloured, and threw a self-conscious glance at Alan; and Alan began loosening his horse’s girth.

‘Alan?’

‘Yes, mistress?’ Ned’s arm was draped round her shoulders and it looked as though it belonged there.

‘Is there a village nearby?’

‘There’s nothing for at least seven miles. Then we reach Pontivy. Why?’

Pontivy was a flourishing market town, and one of the larger settlements in the vicinity, complete with small military garrison under command of the Rohan family.

Gwenn’s lips turned down at the edges. ‘I...I’d hoped to persuade you to find a physician to examine Katarin.’

‘I don’t think that would be wise,’ Ned objected swiftly. ‘Malait might be hot on our trail. We should wait until we arrive at Ploumanach.’

Unhappily, Gwenn nodded. ‘I expect you’re right. But Alan could go to the town. They can’t know Alan is with us. And won’t sound silver buy us a healer we can trust to keep his mouth shut?’

‘We should keep our eyes and ears open for the rest of the afternoon,’ Alan said, remembering the Knights of St John had a hospital at Pontivy. ‘If by the time we make camp we have not seen anything to alarm us, I think a visit to the town might be in order. We’ll probably be out of food by then and will need more supplies, especially for the babe. In view of the circumstances, I agree it has to be me who ventures into Pontivy.’ It had also occurred to Alan that he could find himself a woman. The presence of the Rohan garrison virtually guaranteed that there would be whores a-plenty. He saw nothing wrong with the trade they plied. In his mind, good old-fashioned lust was perfectly natural, and no sin. Fornication between two consenting adults, both of whom knew the precautions that had to be taken – where was the wrong in that? It was adultery that was fraught with perils, that and sex that took no heed of the consequences.

‘Will we reach Pontivy by nightfall?’ Gwenn asked.

‘Unless that mule turns lame.’

‘Perhaps...perhaps you could exchange Ned’s mule in the town for something more comfortable?’

Alan looked consideringly at the mule. Without doubt the animal had seen better days. ‘That will cost you too,’ he said doubtfully, ‘and a deal more than any physician. Do you have any idea how much a horse costs? Why, I’ve seen knights forced to ride around on mules that make a prince of Ned’s beast.’

She lifted her chin. ‘Alan, I told you. We have money.’

That mouth, even when she was angry...

‘No, Gwenn!’ Ned objected, warmly. ‘This mule does me very well.’

‘Don’t lie, Ned. It does not do well at all. It’s a flea-bitten, crabby old thing, and I’d like you to have a horse like Alan’s.’

Alan laughed to hear her assume that the courser belonged to him. ‘This is not my horse, Gwenn. Firebrand is on loan from Duke Geoffrey.’

Ned took Gwenn’s chin and tipped her face to his. ‘We’re not wasting money on a horse for me.’

‘Whose money is it?’ she said, thrusting her bottom lip forwards.

‘Why yours, you know that,’ Ned answered equably. ‘And we must save it, not waste it on a horse for me.’

Like St Jerome, Ned seemed to have a limitless supply of patience and his own brand of determination. When making her marriage vows Gwenn must have sworn to obey her husband, and if Alan were Ned, he’d not hesitate to command her obedience and have done. But he was not Ned, and he was not married to Gwenn.

‘I’m off to the stream to water Firebrand, lest Duke Geoffrey string me up for neglect,’ he said abruptly and left the glade.

***

The great green forest which clothed inland Brittany was eaten into by rivers, and by the townships and settlements dotted at sparse intervals along their banks. Alan’s route had taken them to the River Blavet, and now they followed its tortuous course. They deviated from the Blavet only when it was necessary to avoid habitation. The detours slowed them further.

That night, the second of their journey, they made camp near a small tributary in a section of the forest to the south of Pontivy. Pontivy was one of the larger settlements, and the last for many a long mile where they would be a hospital. Alan was by no means sure that he could persuade a healer leave the hospital and venture into the forest, but he resolved to try. The Knights of St John, he thought cynically, despite being primarily monks who followed the order of St Augustine, had a very worldly attitude to money. However, there was a chance they might help him if he let them think a large donation to the hospital would be forthcoming. No one, not even hospitallers, did something for nothing.

Having agreed upon a suitable camp site, Alan left his companions and went into the town. He headed for the bridge and the site of St Ivy’s oratory.

He rode past a tavern, ringing with noise. The door flew open and a bright javelin of light shot across the highway. For an instant it seemed that the road was the field of a knight’s black shield with a golden band running diagonally across it. A wild, unkempt figure stared out of the tavern’s signboard – leaves sprouted from its hair. This inn was known as the Green Man. The door slammed, and the golden band was gone.

Bats swooped low over Alan’s head. Moths beat desperate wings at the yellow crannies between the inn’s closed shutters.

It was not long before Alan picked out a long two-storey building which stood a little back from the other houses. As it was stone, it had to be the hospital. A black arch in the perimeter wall marked the entrance, but at this time in the evening the vast, reinforced oak door was as firmly closed as the shutters against which the moths had been beating. St John’s Hospital had shut for the night. A shifting light gleamed palely through a window slit to one side of the gate, so the porter was yet in his lodge. A distant bell tolled. The light in the chamber wavered and dimmed. Surmising correctly that the bell must have been the Compline bell, and that the porter was headed with his lantern for the chapel, Alan kneed Firebrand to the door, lifted a gloved fist, and struck at the wood.

‘Open up, good brothers!’ he called, loudly.

The door opened at once, but the response had been so swift it could not have been in answer to Alan’s summons. A cloaked figure – a woman’s – flew through the portal, almost under Firebrand’s nose. The courser snorted and stamped his hoofs. Afraid the woman would be trampled, Alan hauled on his reins, and the Duke’s horse backed. ‘Take care,’ Alan said. He found himself looking down into huge dark eyes set in a washed-out oval face. The woman was young, but there was no time to make out more of her features, for she dragged her hood over her head.

‘My thanks, Brother, for hearing my confession at this hour,’ she murmured, in a low voice to the monk standing in the doorway. She tried to press a coin into his palm.

The monk refused the woman’s money. ‘My best reward would be if you would follow Our Lord’s words,’ he said.

‘Brother?’

‘Go and sin no more.’

The woman hung her head. ‘You don’t understand,’ she said. ‘But how could you?’ She glanced up at Alan, murmured what could have been an apology, and slipped into the night.

Alan heard a sigh, and transferred his attention to the hospitaller.

‘Good evening, my son.’

The monk was draped in the full black habit of the Augustinian Order, and the white cross on his mantle seemed to glow in the jumping torchlight. Alan inclined his head, and dismounted. ‘I’ve come on a mission of mercy, Brother. I’d like to buy food and–’

‘This is a hospital, not a market,’ the monk answered, austerely. The door closed to a chink.

‘I know, and my apologies for disturbing you at this hour. I would not do so if it was not urgent, but it is a matter of life and death, and I must be on the road at dawn.’

The hospitaller’s thin, freckled nose appeared in the gap. ‘Who are you? Are you a Rohan man?’

Alan hesitated, but found no reason to lie. ‘I ride with the Duke.’ He was not on the Duke’s business this night, but he need not admit that.

The chink gaped wide. ‘Come in then. You’d best bring your horse too. It wouldn’t be safe out there.’ The monk shook his head. ‘These are terrible times, my son.’

‘Aren’t they always?’ Alan responded lightly as he led Firebrand under the arch and into the torchlit courtyard.

***

Gwenn had wrapped her brother and sister in her cloak, and was telling Katarin a story to help send her to sleep. The arching branches crowded out moon and starlight, but St Félix’s good monks had given them an aged horn lantern, and as its light was faint, Ned had thought it safe to use it.

Stretched out on his cloak a few feet away, Ned watched his wife in the dull glow. Half of his attention was on the tale she told, while the other half was greedily drinking in the regular features of the face he had loved for so long.

He had heard Gwenn’s yarn many times before, but he always found it a delight. It was the story of a prince brought up among strangers because his family had enemies, and if those enemies found him, he would be in great danger. It was the story of King Arthur and his upbringing with his stepbrother, Sir Kay. Ned was not certain of the effect that particular tale would have on the traumatised child. Gwenn reached the point when Arthur drew the sword from the stone. When he heard the child’s sigh of pleasure, he relaxed.

With Alan gone to Pontivy, at last he and Gwenn were alone. Now she was his wife he could look at her without shame. He could watch the imperceptible movements of the muscles round her eyes and mouth, and he could enjoy looking at the curve of her lips. They were drawn down now, belying the lightness in her voice as she spun out the tale. Her shoulders drooped, betraying tiredness. Sorrow lingered heavily in her heart.

After a few minutes, her melodious voice faltered and came to a halt. The story had played its part. Dark lashes fanned out across the child’s pallid cheeks.

‘She’s asleep,’ Ned said. Rising, he offered Gwenn his hand to draw her to her feet.

‘Praise the Lord. I have a feeling that sleep might do more than any potion to heal her.’

‘You’ll have to waken her if Alan brings a physician.’

Gwenn nodded and dropped his hand, moving away from him towards their pack. Ned knew she was fighting for control. ‘Gwenn?’

‘Yes?’

She turned stiffly, but as she was looking down and her face was in shadow, Ned couldn’t read her expression. Guided by instinct, he murmured, ‘Fears and sorrows grow large at night, my Gwenn. Sunrise will diminish them.’ Hearing a choking sound, he moved closer and reclaimed her hand. Tentatively, he caressed her palm with his thumb. She stood like a creature of stone, staring at the ground. It seemed to Ned that she was waiting for something. He slid his arm round her waist and drew her, unresisting, towards him. ‘Gwenn, I love you,’ he said, unsteadily. ‘I want to ease your hurts.’

She lifted her head and brushed fingers that were as cold as marble across his cheek. ‘I know you do, Ned.’ She smiled, and even in the twilight it looked forced. ‘But you cannot.’

Ned made an inarticulate noise in his throat.

Her breast heaved. ‘I’m sorry. I feel as if I received a mortal blow at Kermaria, and however much I tell myself otherwise, I think no man can help me. Only God can help me. Do you think that God has deserted me?’

Ned shook his head. He pulled her head onto his chest. Doll-like, she hung in the circle of his arms. He held his passion in check, determined that this night he would only offer her comfort. Tenderly he kissed the top of her head. But he had not armed himself against the effect her fragrance would have on him, and no sooner had he breathed in the scent of rosemary and Gwenn, than desire stirred. When her body had been forbidden to him, he had been able to control his longings; but she was no longer forbidden. Gwenn Herevi had miraculously become Gwenn Fletcher, and her body was temptation itself. Ned’s loins ached, he was immediately aroused. He groaned. His wife’s sweet body knocked all thoughts but one from his mind. How weak he was where she was concerned, how damnably weak. He wanted to make love to her, here and now, and if he did not release her immediately she would know it.